Million Veteran Program Targets Genetic Linkages to Diseases

With more than 420,000 participants, the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Million Veteran Program is already one of the world’s largest medical databases linking genetic, clinical, lifestyle and military-exposure information.

Part of the Obama administration’s Precision Medicine Initiative, the program operates at more than 50 VA medical centers nationwide enrolling volunteers with the goal of better understanding how genes affect health and illness. By collecting data from at least a million veterans and making it available for use in approved studies, researchers hope to gain insights into post-traumatic stress disorder, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, substance abuse, as well as heart and kidney disease.